I am not a big fan of Skype and haven’t been one for a long time. On the flip side, I have always liked Microsoft products for some reason. I just hope Microsoft can straighten Skype out or if they can’t, put them out of their misery.

The whole eBay/Skype thing didn’t make much sense to me. I know they thought that it would help buyer/seller communication but who really wants that? The best part about eBay was that you didn’t have to waste time talking with other people. You just clicked a bunch of times and a few days later you got your stuff in the mail.

The only time you should ever want to talk to someone is when you had a problem and needed to contact Tech Support, but since eBay always tried to stay above little things like buyer/seller disputes, it seemed odd that they would want to get involved, even in such a peripheral way.

I hope Microsoft gets their money’s worth. Part of me doubts it, but I wouldn’t be broken hearted if I was proven wrong.

Nope, you can only buy online numbers and voice mail (which is a very handy combination if you have podcasts and want to have voice mail lines that don’t go through Seattle) or you can get stuff from their Personalize section, which is ringtones and other frivolous stuff that is aimed at people other than myself.

So I came up with the idea of giving Skype Gift Certificates so that other people can buy voice mail and online numbers. That’s about as altruistic as I get. Unfortunately, Skype no longer sells gift certificates. Apparently they are working to resolve the problem, but they don’t actually say what the problem is.

There is speculation that in early 2008 a lot of people who had bought Gift Certificate couldn’t redeem them because they had already been redeemed. There is further unconfirmed speculation that Skype suffered a security breach and some information was taken, including a bunch of voucher numbers.

Skype Customer Support recommends that buy vouchers from stores (which would defeat the purpose of me wanting to get rid of my current Skype Credit balance); OR I can sign up for their Skype for Business service, add other people to the Business Control Panel and do everything that I want to do from there (buy online numbers and voice mail or just transfer Skype Credit to them).

Unfortunately, I cannot transfer from my person account to the collective account. I would have to buy more Skype Credit and allocate it that way. Which of course, doesn’t allow me to get rid of my current Skype Credit balance.

I can understand why they have this precaution in place because there would be nothing to stop a Skype terrorist from taking over an account, setting up the Business Control Panel and allocating a bunch of stuff to his cohorts. I understand that, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t frustrating, especially since it appears as though the bad guys have no problem with accessing Skype security. Speculatively.

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

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